Regret After a Divorce: Which Kind Is It?

Regret after a divorce is not one thing. At least five different experiences arrive under that word, only one of them is actually about the decision, and they need completely different responses.

Sorting out which one you are having is more useful than any reassurance I could offer, and considerably more useful than the statistic you are about to be shown by somebody selling something.

Nothing here is therapy. If the regret you are having is about leaving someone who frightened you, skip to that section now, because none of the rest applies.

Do most people regret getting divorced?

Did I make a mistake divorcing is a question with a statistic attached, and you will find it quoted everywhere: that roughly a third of divorced people regret it. It is a different figure from the ones the Census Bureau publishes, and it comes from a different kind of source. It is worth knowing where it comes from before you let it settle on you.

It traces back to a survey published by Avvo, a lawyer directory, in a 2016 press release. Their own wording is: "73% of women report having no regret over being divorced while 61% of men say the same." The methodology note says "A sample of 2000 U.S. adults age 18 and over were surveyed online" through a commercial panel, with data collected in March 2016.

Four things follow from reading the original rather than the reposts.

It is marketing research, not a peer-reviewed study. A company that sells access to lawyers commissioned a relationship poll and issued a press release. That is not fraud, and it is also not evidence of the kind people cite it as.

The 2000 figure is the whole sample, including people who have never divorced. The number who actually answered questions about their own divorce is a fraction of that.

The arithmetic in the reposts does not match the source. If 61% of men reported no regret, the complement is 39%, not the 32% that circulates. Somewhere in the chain of blogs quoting blogs, a number changed and nobody went back to look.

"Regret" was never defined. Regret the decision? The timing? How it was handled? The years before it? Those are different answers to one word, which is the entire subject of this piece.

So: no reliable figure exists for how many people regret divorcing, and anybody who hands you one with confidence has not checked it. That cuts both ways. It is not evidence that you will regret it, and it is not evidence that you will not.

Which kind of regret after a divorce is this?

Five, and the distinction matters because the response to each is different.

Kind	What it sounds like	What actually helps
About the decision	"I should not have left"	Check whether it is your circumstances talking
About your conduct	"I should not have said that in front of the kids"	The only kind you can act on
About timing	"Too soon" or "I wasted ten years"	An unanswerable counterfactual
Missing them	Thinking about them constantly, no wish to return	Not regret at all
Leaving someone dangerous	Fear, contact, pressure to return	A safety process, not a decision

If you already tried again and it ended a second time, that has its own set of questions.

Is missing them the same as regretting it?

No, and confusing the two costs people years.

Missing somebody is a response to their absence. You can miss a person's presence in the kitchen at 7am, their laugh, the fact that somebody knew what your day was like, and simultaneously have no wish whatsoever to be married to them again. Both are true at once and neither cancels the other.

Three specific things get misfiled as regret:

• Loneliness. It is about the empty apartment rather than about them, which becomes obvious when you notice you miss them least on the days your week is full.
• Habit. Twenty years of turning to somebody with news does not stop because a document was filed. Reaching for a person who is not there is a reflex rather than a verdict.
• Nostalgia's editing. Memory keeps the good weekends and drops the ordinary Tuesdays where nothing was working. Comparing your worst current week to their best remembered one is not a comparison.

A test that works reasonably well: are you missing your ex, or missing being married? Those often turn out to be different, and the second one is not about that person at all.

What if I regret how I did it, rather than that I did it?

This is the useful kind, because it is the only one with actions attached.

Regret about conduct is specific: what was said in front of the children, the way it was announced, a message sent in anger, money handled badly, somebody found out from the wrong person. Those have repairs available, and the repairs are usually smaller than the guilt suggests.

• With children: an ordinary, non-dramatic acknowledgment works better than a big apology. "I said something about your dad a few weeks ago that I should not have said. That was mine, not yours." Then behave differently, because behavior is what they track. The rest of that is in am I ruining my kids.
• With your ex: a short, plain sentence, sent once, with no request attached. Not as a route back to a conversation, and not at midnight. The format is in messaging your ex.
• With yourself: naming the specific thing is what stops it from generalizing into "I am the person who ruined it", which is shame rather than regret and behaves completely differently.

What if I regret leaving someone who frightened me?

This one is not a relationship question and it does not belong in a list with the others.

Regret after leaving an abusive relationship is common, well documented, and it is one of the reasons people return. The Hotline lists love among the reasons people stay, alongside fear, shame, lack of resources, and children: "Survivors often still have strong, intimate feelings for their abusive partner." Missing someone who hurt you is not a contradiction and it is not evidence that the leaving was wrong.

What matters more is the timing. The same page states it plainly: "leaving is often the most dangerous period of time for survivors of abuse", because "When a survivor leaves their abusive relationship, they threaten the power and control their partner has established over the survivor's agency. This often causes the partner to retaliate in harmful ways."

So the feeling arrives at exactly the point when acting on it carries the most risk.

If this is your situation, talk to somebody before you decide anything: the National Domestic Violence Hotline, 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. If you are in immediate danger, call 911. Nothing on this site will ever give you a reason to go back, including the parts about reconciliation, which do not apply here at all.

When regret after a divorce is not really about the marriage

Regret has a way of attaching itself to the most recent large decision, whatever is actually wrong.

Before treating it as a verdict on the divorce, check the obvious rivals: money that is tight in a way it was not before, an apartment that is too quiet, exhaustion, a job that got harder, an illness, a winter. Each of those produces the thought "this is worse than before", and the mind supplies a cause.

The check is simple. Was there a stretch, at any point in the last few months, when the practical parts were going acceptably and you still felt the regret? If yes, take it seriously. If the regret reliably arrives with a bad week and leaves with it, the regret is a symptom rather than a finding.

What if we are both thinking about trying again?

This gets asked, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

What this site will not do is teach you tactics for making it happen. No no-contact rules, no messages designed to make somebody miss you, nothing that treats another adult as a lock to be picked. That industry exists and it is not this.

What is reasonable is to think the question through honestly, which is what thinking about trying again is for: what would actually have to be different, what a serious attempt looks like, and the conditions under which it is a bad idea. If both of you are genuinely considering it, a licensed couples therapist is the right room for that conversation, and it is worth going before anybody moves back in. What follows a reconciliation is its own stretch of work.

The single exception, again: where there has been abuse, none of that applies. That is a safety matter and the answer is the hotline above rather than a counselor's office.

Can a divorce be undone once it is final?

Two different situations get asked as one question, and they have different answers.

If the case is still open, nothing has been undone because nothing has been finished, and stopping it is an administrative step rather than a legal argument. That version is covered in what happens after getting back together.

If a judgment has already been entered, undoing it is a narrow and specific legal thing rather than a change of heart. California calls it a set aside, and its courts describe the scope in one sentence: "In a few situations, a judge can cancel or undo an order or judgment in your family law case." The page on what counts is blunt about the bar: "You must give the judge a specific legal reason why they should set aside your order or judgment." Those reasons run to things like fraud or a mistake in the process. Regretting the decision is not on the list, in California or anywhere else I could find.

Which leaves the route most people are actually asking about, which is marrying the same person again. That is a new marriage rather than a restored one, and the things the divorce already carried out do not reverse themselves because a second certificate exists: an account already divided stays divided, a retirement order already executed stays executed. What that means for your particular paperwork, and whether a set aside is even available in your state, is a single question for a lawyer rather than something to work out from a website at 2am.

What to do with the question tonight

You are not going to settle "did I make the right decision" at 2am, because the question as phrased has no available evidence. Nobody gets to see the version where they stayed.

A more answerable question, and the one worth taking to bed instead: what is one thing this week that I could not do inside that marriage, and can do now? It might be small. Sleeping without listening for a mood. Spending forty dollars without a conversation. A Saturday nobody is managing.

That question has an answer. The other one never will, and the difference between them is most of what regret costs people in the first year.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did I make a mistake getting divorced?

That question has no available evidence, because the alternative version does not exist to compare against. What is checkable is which kind of regret you are having: about the decision, about your conduct, about timing, or missing someone without wanting to return. Only the second has actions attached.

What percentage of people regret divorce?

There is no reliable figure. The number that circulates traces to a 2016 press release from a lawyer directory, based on an online panel survey, where the original wording reported people with no regret and the reposted percentages do not even match that arithmetic.

Is it normal to miss your ex but not want them back?

Very. Missing someone responds to their absence; wanting to return is a judgment about the relationship. They come apart routinely, and mistaking the first for the second is one of the more common errors of the first year.

I regret leaving my abusive partner. What does that mean?

That you are human, not that leaving was wrong. The Hotline lists love among the reasons people stay with an abusive partner. It also notes that leaving is often the most dangerous period, which is why this feeling deserves a phone call to 1-800-799-7233 before it becomes a decision.

Can you reverse a divorce after it is final?

Not on the grounds of having changed your mind. Canceling a judgment is a narrow legal procedure, called a set aside in California, and it requires a specific legal reason such as fraud or a defect in the process. If a case is still open it can usually just be stopped, which is a different situation. For most people asking this, the real route is marrying the same person again, which creates a new marriage rather than restoring the old one.

How long does divorce regret last?

There is no standard length, and be wary of anyone who gives you one. What changes more reliably than the feeling is your circumstances, and regret that tracks a bad week tends to lift with it.

Should we get back together?

That is a real question and no article can answer it, though there is a way to think it through. Tactics for winning someone back are not on this site, a licensed couples therapist is the right place to work it out seriously, and where abuse has been part of the history, reconciliation is a safety matter rather than a relationship decision. Regret after a divorce is a question to sit with rather than to act on quickly.